2011/6/12 Philip Jägenstedt <phi...@foolip.org> > After loads of editing and discussion on this list since NGS started I > still can't see any clear direction. People have very divergent ideas > about what we should make of NGS, and the style guidelines aren't > providing much guidance. > > Before diving into improving small parts of the puzzle I think we > really need to reach some kind of conclusion about what level of > normalization we want and where. Points to consider: > > * difficulty of entering new releases in line with the guidelines > > * for a huge portion of our data, we will never have the chance to > see the cover again, so it will remain as it is now (normalized) > > * usefulness of the data for tagging > > The point where people seem to disagree most is the release-level > data: release titles, track titles and track artists. For the purposes > of discussion, I'll make an initial "no normalization" suggestion to > work from: > > "Release-level data should be entered as close as possible to what is > on the release. All captialization should be preserved. All typos > should be preserved. Anything written in proximity to the track title > should be entered, no matter how long-winded or irrelevant. Track > artists should only diverge from the release artist if there is a > clear split between titles and artists on the cover and the way the > artist is credited can be recreated exactly with an artist credit. > Otherwise, the artist should be part of the track title." > > http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/Style/Principle needs to be rewritten for > NGS, since there can't possibly be artist intent for both the release > level and the recording/work levels. I'm suggesting (in a devil's > advocate kind of way) that it updated to define release-level data and > say that "No normalization whatsoever should be applied to > release-level data". > > Now, please disagree, and tell me what we should do instead. >
First, because we are technically unable to do otherwise, we will normalize color, font type and size, and also probably line breaks (although we could decide to preserve them in some way). This may seem obvious, but I believe it serves as a reminder that we will never be exactly "as printed". We can't avoid normalizing a bit, so the real question is not "should we normalize" but rather "where do we stop normalization". First suggestion, I wouldn't preserve line breaks. I hope no one disagrees with this :-) -- Frederic Da Vitoria (davitof) Membre de l'April - « promouvoir et défendre le logiciel libre » - http://www.april.org
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